


critical development.

by darkerholland



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkerholland/pseuds/darkerholland
Summary: During a podcast interview, Chan and Felix get an unexpected question. The answer is more complicated than they would like to admit.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Felix
Comments: 4
Kudos: 137





	critical development.

“We’re really grateful for the opportunities we’ve received so far. We’ve been able to reach so many people of different cultures, backgrounds and identities. It’s such an amazing feeling knowing your music knows no borders.” Felix smiled as he finished his statement. He saw Chan nod along beside him.

“Have you encountered many difficulties along the way?” James, the interviewer, asked. Chan and Felix laughed.

“Obviously. Some were more… trying than others,” Felix said, throwing a wink at his boyfriend. James laughed with them.

James was sat in a comfortable soft pink chair, and Chan and Felix shared the matching couch. Three microphones hung above their heads and two cameras faced the trio, one filming James and the other one Chan and Felix. They had been talking for about thirty minutes now, and Felix was glad they were finally going to transition to the next subject, which was going to address the elephant in the room.

About a month ago, Felix had woken up to about twenty missed calls from his friends and family and triple that amount of texts. A short video taken by a sasaeng the day prior had gone viral on Twitter. In it, Felix could be seen giving Chan a quick peck on his lips before heading back to the dorms whilst Chan was going back to the studio.

It had been a careless mistake on their part, really. They had been in a relationship for a year already and giving each other a quick kiss had become part of their routine. So much so, that they had even started doing it in public. They hadn’t counted on anyone actually stalking and filming them, and the end result was a very stressful week full of statements, apologies and admittedly, a lot of crying.

“I really just want to say how courageous I think you guys were to admit openly to your relationship.”

Chan shrugged. “The evidence was already out there. No matter what we would have said, the damage was already done. We thought it was best to be honest about it.”

“How has the response been?”

Felix sighed. “We’re lucky our fanbase is mostly internationally based and a vast majority live in western countries where same-sex relationships are accepted. The response from our fans has been overwhelmingly positive,” Felix said.

“We’ve become South Korea’s punching bag, though,” Chan said with a small laugh, though Felix noted the hurt in it. “Especially the media likes gossiping about us.”

“Will it influence your music producing?” James asked, sounding genuinely worried. “We’re not sure yet,” Chan admitted. “We were lucky the video leaked after our promotions had finished. I’m always producing new songs, but there hasn’t been a new release date yet.”

It was still too early for a new comeback anyway, but normally the deadline would have already been set. They hadn’t yet heard anything from their management about their schedule, and Felix knew how much it worried Chan.

“Are you guys okay with talking about your relationship?” James asked.

“Sure,” Chan and Felix said in unison. “We want to be open about it now,” Felix continued. “We feel like we can be some sort of representation for a lot of gay couples facing scrutinization and hate in their daily life.”

“That’s really cool! Is this the first time you’ve spoken about your relationship during an interview?”

“Yeah,” Chan said. “We watch a lot of your videos and listen to your podcast, so we felt comfortable enough to talk about it with you.” James smiled proudly at the compliment and sat up straighter.

“Was it love at first sight?” James asked out of the blue. No easing into the subject.

Felix frowned and when Chan turned his head to look at him, Felix saw a similar expression on his face.

“I guess not?” James asked. Chan and Felix laughed comfortably.

“Not necessarily,” Chan confessed.

They had never talked about when they started having feelings for each other. Felix remembered the moment he had been certain he was in love with Cha, though. It was during Yellow Wood promotions, when he and Chan had gone to see a romantic movie. The movie depicted the life of two people falling in love during high school. Fifty years later, they danced to the same song they had danced to during their prom. With a heavy feeling, Felix had realised he wanted that kind of life. A peaceful life living in a coastal town with a few dogs and cats, growing his own food and doing whatever he wanted to do. With Chan. Only with Chan.

Felix had confessed his feelings randomly during lunch a few months later. He had been pleasantly surprised when Chan admitted he felt the same way about Felix. But they had never asked each other when they had started falling in love with the other. They focussed more on the future than the past. For good reason.

“There was an immediate click,” Felix said. “A connection I didn’t have with any of the other trainees. I don’t know if it was because we’re both from Sydney and he reminded me of the life I had left behind, or if we’re soulmates and that’s a thing that was just supposed to happen,” he said with a laugh. Chan lightly punched him in his arm. He always went around calling Felix his soulmate, so Felix thought it was only fair to tease him back.

“How do you know it wasn’t love then?” James asked curiously.

Chan and Felix looked at each other, having a silent conversation with only their eyes. Did they want to talk about it? Chan had no trouble being honest about his thoughts and feelings, but Felix still had trouble opening up to people. They had never been secretive about the stages their relationship had gone through, but especially Felix didn’t like clinging onto it too much. They were good now, why would they remind themselves of unhappier times?

But as Felix looked into Chan’s eyes, he saw a silent plea. Throughout the entire month, their fans had called them a ‘perfect couple’ with no faults and flaws. They edited together compilations of clips of them seemingly in love, even if the feelings had still been platonic back then. They found every pre-debut picture they could get their hands on and captioned it ‘in love since the beginning’. Where Stay saw two boys smiling at each other without a care in the world, Chan and Felix saw the strain and stress in their faces, fatigue wearing them down to the bone.

Chan had felt pressured ever since. He had taken most of the blame for their trying times already, even though it had been no one’s fault, just the result of two boys desperately wanting to help each other through the darkness, even when neither of them could see where they were going. Now, he wanted to tell people nothing had been easy. It had been hard work. They had made it, yes, but there had been many times where they had almost given up.

Felix gave Chan a small nod. “Actually,” Chan started, “our relationship, or friendship, whatever you want to call it, wasn’t that great in the beginning.”

“Oh?” James asked, his interest piqued. “Do you want to talk some more about that?”

“Our relationship was… complicated,” Chan explained.

“And not always healthy,” Felix added.

“I must admit,” James said, “that this comes as a bit of a surprise. You two seemed so close from the start.”

Felix nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, we definitely were. We cared a lot for each other, but we weren’t always good for each other. We subjected each other to a lot of things friends shouldn’t subject each other to.”

James was confused by the statement. Chan laughed and sat up straighter, getting ready to dive in what had happened.

“Both of us were struggling a lot with our mental health. Our mental illness seemed to amplify each other, which made it so much worse. By the time Felix had arrived in Seoul and started his training, I was already carefully selecting trainees for the survival show. I knew I wanted Felix to be a part of Stray Kids the first time I saw him dance.”

“Even though he had just started training?” James asked incredulously.

Felix laughed. He remembered that conversation. It was only three weeks after he had arrived and to say he didn’t feel ready to debut yet was a huge understatement. Chan had been confident in his abilities, but Felix had mirrored everyone else’s opinion: he needed a few more years of training before he was ready to debut. In the end, everything had worked out, but he still wondered if he had truly been good enough, or if he was only in Stray Kids because Chan had wanted it to be that way.

“I saw the potential in him,” Chan said, an explanation Felix himself had heard dozens of times. “Of course, he needed to improve, and fast as well. I think that’s where it went wrong. I was really strict on him because I thought it would work. I thought it would drive him to work harder.”

James focussed on Felix. “You didn’t like him being strict with you?” he asked.

“I didn’t mind him being strict, but sometimes he took it too far. For example, giving constructive criticism is fine, but not if you give the other trainees a bunch of compliments and not me. The singling out is what bothered me the most.”

Felix had never been the most confident in his abilities, but it had plummeted even more during his trainee days with Chan as a mentor. Of course, he knew Chan had only wanted the best for him and he had never blamed him for _that_ , but the pain and shame he felt whenever Chan complimented the other trainees but always found a point of critique for Felix, no matter how hard he tried, was something that had hurt him for months after they had already debuted. Now, though Chan was still strict with him sometimes, he still made sure to counter one feedback point with at least three compliments.

“Is that something you told Chan?”

“Eventually,” Felix laughed, an awkward edge to it. A lot of things had happened in between.

“I did some pretty nasty things to Felix, to be honest,” Chan admitted. Felix heard the shame in his voice. “I look back on my actions and think ‘why did I ever think that was a good idea?’”

“Like what? If you don’t mind me asking.” Chan looked to Felix.

“Once,” Felix said after hesitating for a second, “the company had given the trainees a night off. We were allowed to go to dinner and a karaoke bar with the company card. At this point, I didn’t have any friends except for Chan and I thought this would be a really good opportunity to open myself up a bit more towards people. But just before we went out to leave, Chan pulled me aside and told me to stay in the dorm. He said I should take this time to study Korean because I was still lacking. So while everyone went out, I was stuck in the dorm, eating ramen and falling asleep at my desk.” Felix sighed. “I didn’t talk to Chan for a week after that,” he said with a laugh.

“Yeah, that’s definitely a shitty thing to do,” James said, though the remark didn’t sound accusatory. Chan’s ears had gotten a red tint and Felix knew he was embarrassed. Felix didn’t like throwing Chan under the bus like this. It showed only one side of the relationship.

“But it wasn’t just him,” Felix clarified. “I didn’t treat him right either. Back then, I used my depression as an excuse to lash out at people. But depression should never be used as an excuse for someone’s actions. It can offer an explanation, but nothing more than that.”

“I understand that,” James said. “I also behaved like an asshole when I was suffering a lot from my depression.”

“Because Chan was my only friend, he was the only one I could talk to. But I didn’t grow up in a household where I could readily share my feelings. My parents are pretty traditionalist Asian, so mental health is just kind of shoved into a corner. We didn’t talk about it. So instead of telling him how much I was suffering, I would send him cryptic texts, which would make him go running to wherever I was to make sure I was okay.”

“Sometimes he’d give me his location, and sometimes he’d leave it up to me to figure out where he was. I would have to search half of Seoul because he refused to tell me where he was,” Chan said.

“I wanted to test how much he cared about me. How far he would go to make sure I was okay. Sometimes I would send one of those texts when I knew he was busy with work or other friends, just to see if I was more important than whatever he was doing at the moment.”

But Chan had come every single time. The longest it had taken him to find Felix was two hours, when Felix had hidden away in a pc café, playing games and ignoring Chan’s calls and texts.

Felix would text things like ‘I don’t want to go on anymore’ or ‘I’ve suffered for so long, I’m so tired’. He was never serious about his threats. Every time Chan found him, Felix was okay. Not mentally, but physically he was unhurt.

Until one night, when he really was truly tired. He didn’t text Chan. He went to the rooftop alone and stood there for almost half an hour, debating whether or not to jump. He had just manoeuvred himself onto the ledge when the door behind him opened. Felix hadn’t turned around. He knew it was Chan. Knew it by the heavy silence, in which he realised that Felix hadn’t said anything to him and that this was for real.

“Felix? What are you doing?” Chan had called out, the tremble in his voice unmistakable despite his efforts to sound calm and collected.

“I don’t see the point anymore,” Felix had replied. He had expected to cry. But he felt oddly numb.

“Let’s talk about this okay?”

“I’m done with always talking. It’s so tiring.”

“Let’s find you help. Let’s find a therapist, okay? You can talk to them.”

What followed was a lot of pleading and crying on Chan’s part. After a few minutes, Chan had managed to grab on to Felix’ hand and had pulled him backwards unto the roof.

Felix hadn’t cried. Not when he had looked down at the street below and imagined himself lying on the cold floor. Not when he had stood on the ledge and felt the wind in his hair, knowing it would be the last time he would feel something like that. Not when Chan had pleaded with him not to do it. But in that moment, engulfed by Chan’s arms and the realisation that Chan had known something was wrong without Felix having to tell him, he burst out in tears. They lay on the roof for an hour, crying and embracing each other.

Therapy had followed after that. Felix had been prescribed heavy antidepressant and therapy sessions three times a week. Slowly, he got better again, and became the person his depression had tried to hide away. And though Felix hadn’t had any suicidal thoughts in a very long time, he wasn’t allowed on rooftops by himself.

James whistled lowly. “That’s some heavy stuff,” he said.

“Absolutely,” Felix said. He was happy they were moving on. “But after that, we both got the help we needed. We talked a lot, which wasn’t always nice. We had to admit a lot of our own faults and take responsibility for our actions, but we got through it together.”

“And now you’re open about everything?” James suggested.

Chan nodded. “Communication is the most important aspect of our relationship. Because we’ve seen each other during our darkest days, and have seen each other’s ugly sides, there is no fear of judgement between us. If there’s something on our mind, we tell each other.”

Openness was still a thing Felix struggled with. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to share his feelings. Sometimes his mind just tricked him into thinking whatever he was going through wasn’t that bad and certainly not worth telling Chan about. But Chan knew him well and could sense whenever something was going on, so with some gentle prodding, Felix would spill everything anyway.

There had been points in their relationship where Felix thought it had passed the point of salvation. They weren’t meant to be in each other’s lives and they needed to accept that and move on. And maybe that had been the case in the beginning. But they _wanted_ to be in each other’s lives, which was the driving force behind their wish to improve their relationship.

Relationships were hard work, which was certainly true in their case, but it paid off in the end. They were happy together, which was all that mattered.


End file.
